Worst Floods in Decades Strike Russia, Kazakhstan
Russia and Kazakhstan have ordered the evacuation of over 100,000 people after rapid snowmelt caused major rivers to burst their banks, triggering the worst flooding in the region in at least 70 years, Reuters reports.
The deluge of meltwater has inundated dozens of settlements in the Ural Mountains, Siberia, and areas of Kazakhstan near rivers such as the Ural and Tobol. Local officials reported water levels rising by several metres in just a few hours, reaching all-time highs.
On Friday, the Ural River, the third-longest river in Europe that flows through Russia and Kazakhstan and empties into the Caspian Sea, breached a dam, flooding the city of Orsk, located south of the Ural Mountains.
Downstream, water levels were rising in Orenburg, a city of about 550,000 people.
Sirens blared in Kurgan, a city on the Tobol River, a tributary of the Irtysh, prompting immediate evacuation orders. A state of emergency was also declared in Tyumen, a major oil-producing region in Western Siberia - the world's largest hydrocarbon basin.
"The Kurgan and Tyumen regions face difficult days ahead," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "There is a lot of water coming."
President Vladimir Putin spoke with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, where over 86,000 people have been evacuated due to the flooding. Tokayev said the flooding was likely the worst in 80 years.
The most affected areas are the Atyrau, Aktobe, Akmola, Kostanay, East Kazakhstan, North Kazakhstan, and Pavlodar regions, most of which border Russia and are crossed by rivers that originate in Russia, such as the Ural and Tobol.
Translation by Iurie Tataru
